Leaving Monotony
by RunawayTelephones
Summary: And so Amy Pond became Amy Williams at last. Domesticity became the routine. And Amy hated it. Then Amy received a startling warning from a friend that could change her life of monotony- if Amy doesn't leave, Rory will die. Post season 6.
1. Routine, Routine, Routine

And so Amy Pond became Amy Williams at last.

Amy tried to settle into domestic life with Rory. At first it wasn't hard because she genuinely enjoyed it. It was a new adventure, and Amy was always up for adventures. He got a job as a nurse and took classes online to start working toward his doctorate. She got a secretary job at the hospital he worked at. Life started to gain a routine.

Every morning Amy would wake up with her husband beside her and get ready for an easy steady job. After work, Rory would do his class work while Amy tidied up the house and cooked some dinner. They had become the perfectly normal suburban couple.

And Amy hated it.

She didn't want to hate it. She wanted to love it, she really did, but she just couldn't get into it as much as Rory did. Amy had always loved excitement, loved trying new things, and above all else, loved adventure. Rory was the opposite of almost all of that. Rory was safety, Rory was routine, and Rory was simple. He didn't ask for much, but he didn't do much to satisfy Amy's hunger for the unknown either. Sure, he would try, he would bring home a new recipe that he thought Amy would enjoy, or he would try surprising his wife with gifts, but it wasn't enough. Amy had tasted the ultimate adventure, and after that, everything else tasted bland.

She really loved Rory and wanted badly to make him happy by continuing on with their average and subtle life in a small town, but after two years of it, she was starting to rip her hair out from monotony.

"Hey, Amy," Rory greeted his wife with a quick peck on the lips. She smiled back at him. He'd been at work later than she had since one of his patients had decided it would be much fun to pull out his catheter. Amy had, as a result, gotten home before him.

Rory sniffed the air. "Roast chicken?" he guessed.

"Of course," Amy replied. _Just like every Tuesday…_she added in her head. She had started making the same meal on the same day of the week for four consecutive weeks now, but if Rory had noticed, he didn't seem to care.

"Great. I'll be in the living room with the laptop catching up on classwork, okay?" Rory said. Amy nodded and watched him bounce out of the room happily.

Every day pretty much went exactly like that. The two of them ate dinner followed by a show on the television, and before they knew it, it was time for them to go to bed.

"Goodnight, sweetheart," Rory said with a gentle kiss on her forehead. He rolled over in bed, facing away from Amy. He had a thing where he always slept on the left side of the bed and always had to be facing in the left direction. He was, after all, a creature of habit.

"Goodnight," Amy returned.

Within a few minutes, Rory was snoring lightly and Amy was lying poker-straight in bed, wide awake. _Maybe I should just have a cup of tea to relax me._

Careful not to wake her slumbering husband, Amy got up out of bed and crept down the stairs to put on a kettle. Thankfully the kettle boiled water without the shriek Amy was accustomed to from her youth, so it did not wake Rory.

Once the tea was ready, Amy held it in her hands to warm them up before sipping at it slowly. When she was approximately halfway through her cup, she heard a noise from outside. She looked outside eagerly, but it was just a dog that had gotten out of the neighbor's house and was being chased down by a young boy. _What was I thinking? Nothing exciting happens in Leadworth._

Amy sighed and turned from the window, disappointed. She returned to her cup of tea feeling resigned. It was when she was down to the last dregs of her tea that she heard another noise. It was a noise that she had dreamed about almost every night for the past two years, a noise that she would never forget. It was the trumpet for adventure, the call of escapades.

Amy ran outside despite being in her nightgown. Sure enough, there it was, blue and boxy, just as she remembered it. The TARDIS was parked on her back lawn. Her heart was thumping in her chest and her mind was buzzing with excitement.

The door to the blue box swung open to reveal the same messy haired man she remembered, her ridiculous Doctor. He gave her a halfhearted grin, running a hand through his wild locks. His deep-set dark eyes gave her an expression that she couldn't quite place.

"Amelia Pond," the Doctor greeted her. Amy beamed at him. She wanted to run up to him and hug him like there was no tomorrow, to beg him to take her on at least one short trip away from monotonous Leadworth, but she did neither of those things.

"Watch it, Doctor, it's Amy Williams now," she corrected him.

"Right. Amy Williams. Well, I'm sorry to start off our reunion in such an unpleasant way, but..." the Doctor paused. "Amy, if you don't come with me, then Rory will die," the Doctor said.


	2. Memories Renewed

Amy blinked at the Time Lord, trying to process what he'd just said. "Is this some sort of joke? Because of how often he'd die and come back?" Amy asked slowly. The Doctor shook his head, not showing even a crack of a smile anymore.

"I wish I could say yes," he replied. Amy took a step toward him, squinting at his face, looking for any sign that he was joking. She found none.

"Doctor, what is this all about?" the redhead questioned. He had just shown up at her house in the middle of the night after being gone for two years and demanded that she get in his time machine or else her husband would die. _I have every right to be suspicious._

The Doctor tapped his foot impatiently against the ground. "Time's a-wasting. Oh, I've never said that before. Because time's never truly wasted… stop distracting me, Pond. In the TARDIS with you," the Doctor commanded. Amy crossed her arms over her chest as a symbol of defiance.

"Why?" The small and simple word formed easily from Amy's lips, infuriating the Doctor. She could tell he was angry by the way that little crease appeared in his forehead and his eyes squeezed shut for a moment.

"Do you want Rory to die? If so, be my guest, stay exactly where you are," the Doctor said, not quite yelling. Amy uncrossed her arms and move toward the door of the TARDIS. "Right, in you go." The Doctor hurried her inside of his blue box, barely waiting for the ginger woman to get her second foot through the door before squeezing in behind her and rushing for his precious controls.

The sight of the interior of the time machine made Amy go bug-eyed, just like she'd been when she first saw it. The handles, the levers, the buttons… everything was just how she remembered it. It brought back memories of so many journeys made to a plethora of planets at any point in history, or the future for the matter. The future was a little more fun usually. The trips to the past sometimes did not involve indoor plumbing, something Amy simply refused to go without despite the Doctor's protests that humanity had done just fine without it for centuries.

The Doctor did his usual routine and the TARDIS jerked around, dematerializing from Amy's backyard. She wondered if Rory had woken up at the noise. She knew somewhere in her heart that even if she'd been asleep when the TARDIS had landed, she'd have woken up from that noise. That noise meant everything- quite literally- would be at her fingertips.

"So, Amy, how long exactly has it been for you?" the Doctor asked, not looking up from the controls. Amy walked in circles around the console, trailing behind the Time Lord slightly, watching him though he would not even look at her.

"Two years," she answered. The Doctor nodded.

"Of course. That would be how long it would take," the Doctor muttered, more to himself than anything. Amy's eyes narrowed. She swung around, sliding herself in front of the Doctor.

"How long what would take?" she asked. The Doctor turned heel and went the other way around the console. It was like they were playing cat and mouse… but the Doctor never really liked to be a mouse.

"If I told you now, it would ruin the entire point of me getting you out of there," the Doctor sighed. He still wasn't looking at her, and the frustrated the ginger woman to no end. The Time Lord fiddled with his controls and Amy got the feeling that he wasn't really controlling the ship at all. He was avoiding her.

To solve this little problem, well, Amy had to do it her way. So she grabbed his shoulders and turned him toward her, forcing him to look her in the eye. Finally, his dark eyes met hers. He looked tired, she noticed, now that she got a good look at him. She'd known he wasn't one to sleep much, but he looked unhealthy.

"Amelia," the Doctor warned with a simple word. Amy knew he was warning her because he only used her full first name when he was very pleased or very upset. This situation was evident of the latter.

"Doctor," Amy challenged right back. The Doctor took a long blink, pressing his forehead to his sonic screwdriver which Amy hadn't even noticed in his hand. She'd been more focused on other things… like the old Time Lord's return, the TARDIS, and mentions of her husband's death. "Tell me," she demanded.

"If I tell you, he might die anyway," the Doctor notified her. Amy let go of his shoulders, her arms falling to her sides uselessly. "I will tell you as much as I can once we've safely taken care of a few… things. But we'll do that in the morning. Well, morning by your internal clock. Mine's a bit disoriented, so yes, we'll follow yours. Missing a few cogs, I dare say. Now, it's off to bed with you," the Doctor said.

Amy, never one to take orders willingly, crossed her arms in front of her chest. "Why can't we take care of 'things' now?"

"Because I want you actually fully functional when we do, which means you need a proper night's rest," the Doctor countered. Amy let out a heavy breath in exasperation. She felt fine, awake as she'd ever be. Why sleep when there was Rory's life to save? "Because we're in a time machine," the Doctor answered her unspoken question as if reading her mind.

"You always have been a hypocrite, Doctor," Amy spat in defiance. The Doctor looked as though he was attempting to be angry, but he only managed a weary look. He knew exactly what she was getting at, but he didn't respond, didn't defend himself. And that bothered the hell out of Amy. She wanted to get a rise out of him, to make him passionate enough to start saving lives immediately, like he always had. But he remained as he was- lifeless in comparison to the golden image Amy had seared into her memory of him.

"Fine then. I'll go," Amy whispered. There seemed to be a hush over the TARDIS. Even the usual banging about caused by tumbling through time and space didn't seem to be causing any ruckus. Amy turned away from the Doctor and marched off in the direction of the space ship that she remembered her room being when she'd last been in the box. She found the room exactly where she left it, which was saying something when you took the TARDIS's personality and habit of moving rooms into consideration.

Once inside the room, she saw that, unlike the relative position of the room, nothing inside was at all the same. It was like every change that had been made to the room had been wiped away, leaving a clean and bland slate behind. There was a bed with dark blue sheets, an empty dresser, a cleaned off nightstand with a lamp on it, and a mirror. All other affects were completely absent.

For some reason it made a wave of sadness come over Amy. As she crawled into the sheets, she felt like she was in a foreign place, like a hotel in another country, not in the machine that she had called home for two years. It showed her that the Doctor had moved on. He'd gone on in his life, not stayed stuck in monotony like Amy had. He had left her behind and continued to exist, even though he hadn't moved an inch in Amy's memory and imagination.

She hadn't even asked how long it'd been for him. It could be years- decades. He could've had dozens of companions since her. Amy didn't feel jealous, but she did feel empty. For the past two years, she could've been traveling alongside the Doctor like she'd dreamed of doing her entire life, but she was stuck in Leadworth once more, like she'd always dreaded.

Amy asked the TARDIS to turn out the lights, and the machine obliged, leaving the room in total darkness except for a glow that emanated from under the crack in the door. Light that came from cracks was not something that usually comforted the redhead, but she made an exception this time.


	3. Planning to Agree, Agreeing to Plan

When she woke up, Amy immediately whipped her head around to see if the day before had really happened, to make sure she had not invented an elaborate dream to escape the boring reality of domestic life with Rory. To her great relief, at first, she confirmed it was not a dream. With that confirmation, she got up and dressed for the day, finding a door to the TARDIS closet across from her bed.

After dressing, Amy made her way to the console room. She found what she was expecting- the Doctor leaning on the console looking as if he hadn't gone to bed to bed at all.

"Do you ever sleep?" Amy asked. His floppy hair moved slightly as he turned to look at her.

"Sure I do, everyone sleeps. Though I did come across a species that lived on Buddapestri that would never sleep. They'd developed some sort of a fear of sleep and therefore only lived a few years, dying because their brains never got a rest," the Doctor digressed.

"So you're thinking of becoming one of these things on… Bhudda something or other?" Amy asked, eyebrows raised, hands on her hips.

"No, of course not, that would be ridiculous," the Doctor scoffed. "I'd have to change my entire biology. As is I do enough change when I do my complete regenerations down to the atomic level. Besides, those creatures have three eyes and a few tails, I've lost count of just how many, but no matter because-"

"Oh, shut up!" Amy yelled. The Doctor looked startled. He closed his mouth from his rambling, opened it again as if to say something, but then he closed it again, thinking better of it.

"Look, I know you can't tell me much, but tell me all you can. Now," Amy demanded. The Doctor breathed in and out, appearing to focus on the simple task. Amy found herself attempting to match his breathing, as if that would bring the two back to a place where they could be normal with each other again, as if it would open the strained channels of communication. Realizing it was a ridiculous thought, Amy cleared her throat, effectively throwing off her breathing pattern.

"Okay. Fine," the Time Lord sighed, running a hand through his hair. Amy wondered what could be so bad that the old man couldn't even sleep because of it.

"If you had stayed at your house with Rory… he would have been dead by morning. I can't tell you how or why. I can tell you that I saw it happen, and you made me swear to… to stop it from happening," the Doctor admitted, pausing between words like he was trying to make sure he didn't give anything too important away.

Amy was floored. She couldn't believe that it was actually real, would be real, would have been, whatever. She couldn't believe that her husband was really going to die, that the Doctor saw it happen, that she must have either seen it too or found out about it sometime in the future because she'd told the Doctor to fix it.

"That's all I can tell you. Now, I have some things to do, so you can go explore the TARDIS. Maybe go for a swim," the Doctor said. He turned his back to her, shutting her out just like that.

Amy still couldn't get over what the Doctor had said about Rory, or she would have complained about him shooing her away. He was even more closed off than usual, which was saying something, and it worried her. She stayed there for a moment in the console room, trying to get a read on him from the view of his back. When she quickly realized that was impossible, she approached him, tapping him on the shoulder. He did not turn around, so Amy slid in between him and the console.

"Doctor, I don't care if you can't tell me any more, I don't even care if you're ignoring me right now, but I thought we were going to stop Rory from… getting into danger," Amy stuttered at the end, making her demand a little less intense, not able to say the word dying.

The Doctor backed up from the fiery woman in front of him. "That's what I'm doing. Believe it or not, I'm making a plan. I know you think I always fly by the seat of my pants, but I thought I'd make an exception this time considering that I actually give a damn about saving your husband," the Doctor said in dangerously docile tones.

His voice had a level of sarcasm and seriousness that Amy wasn't used to. She'd seen this side of him a few times, like at Demon's Run when Melody had been stolen. But never had she seen this cold side directed at her. It made her want to back away from him, to retreat, but she stood strong.

"It shouldn't be what _you're_ doing, it should be what _we're _doing," Amy pointed out, keeping her voice sturdy.

The Doctor's eyes darkened, but the ginger couldn't tell if it was from anger or sorrow. After a thousand years of existing, the Doctor's eyes were always filled with some sort of pain. To see the universe in all it's pain day after day and never able to find a band aid big enough to fix it… Amy had come to understand that that's how the Doctor lived. Even he wasn't a big enough bandage for a universe where every planet ached for a savior.

"This one I can save, but you need to let me," the Doctor whispered. His voice was no quieter than his previous statement, but it was no longer filled with harsh sentiment. Now it was soft and asking, not demanding. Amy couldn't help the nod that her head decided on it's own to perform.

"But you need to let me help. Eventually," Amy added as a condition to her agreement. The Doctor nodded.

Amy left the console room because she wanted to keep true to her agreement of letting the Doctor save Rory, but that wasn't her only reason. As she walked away to her room and changed into a swim suit, her mind swirled all over, trying to process. She'd spent the past two years hoping childishly that the Doctor would come and whisk her away from boredom. Had she learned nothing? Had she grown up at all?

Barely paying attention to what she picked out to wear, Amy stripped down and sat on her floor for a moment before putting on the suit. She felt vulnerable, naked in more than one sense. Though she had grown to hate her picket fence life with Rory, she couldn't imagine a life without him. She'd already proved that much to herself when the Dream Lord had decided to pick on her and killed Rory in a dream. Rory had become her rock, the only thing that held her down from floating away when she had been waiting for the Doctor. At the time, she'll admit, she wasn't thinking long term. She didn't think about Rory as a steady boyfriend or eventual husband. She just thought of him as the guy that held her grounded while she waited for the man who would come to take her to fly away.

Slowly, Amy put the swim suit on and searched dully for the swimming pool. To her surprise, she found it fairly quickly. She dipped her one foot in, testing the waters. Finding it to be warm enough, she took a few steps backward before breaking into a run and jumping into the pool.

Once Amy hit the water, a thought came to her mind, hitting her with as much force as the water. She had never planned on having a life after traveling with the Doctor. She'd never even considered settling down, not in the back of her mind. She'd put all her eggs in one TARDIS, so to speak. What was she without the Doctor, without time travel? Just a nurse's wife? A secretary?

Amy reached the bottom of the pool, her lungs starting to burn from being under for too long. She needed oxygen, but the water and her realization were crushing her.

_No._

Amy pushed off from the bottom, thrusting up toward the surface. _Without the Doctor I am not nothing. I am a strong and independent woman. I can type faster than almost anyone. I can fry bacon so well that I'll have even a vegetarian drooling. And I care about people in my life, and they care about me. There's Rory, my parents, my friends, my daughter, even my boss._

Amy's head broke the surface, her hands flying above her, lungs flooding with oxygen. She took in several breaths, lying on her back, letting the water pull her back and forth as she floated.

"And I'll go to any hellhole of a world to rescue those people," Amy finished aloud.

Staring at the ceiling, she started making a plan of her own. She might not ever want to return to a boring life of routine with Rory, but she was certainly going to save him. She was going to convince the Doctor to let her help, and he was going to let her in on what was keeping him awake. After all, Amy had learned that another skill she possessed was one of persuasion.

A/N: Sorry if this chapter is a bit tacky at the end with Amy's inner monologue and such, but I needed to show how affected she has been and the doubts she has despite outer confidence. Comments? I love to get better with your criticism.


End file.
